The question is, what are they provoking? If Erdogan's fear is provocation of a war with the PKK, it is already a fact. Erdogan said it has become "inevitable for Turkey to start a more intense military process against terrorism. The operations in the region are under way."
If the intent is to provoke a wider and more extensive war in which fighting the PKK is only one element or a pretext, as Kurdish commentators and politicians suspect, then the parallel is not the Turkish military's resolve to demonstrate strength - as it did in 1998 against Syria, leading to the expulsion of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan.
Rather, one has to look at a previous Turkish military adventure: the invasion and occupation of Northern Cyprus in 1974, in which the 1960 Treaty of Guarantee (between Turkey, Greece and the United Kingdom) was invoked. Turkey's rationale then was to use its right to take unilateral military action ostensibly to restore constitutional order and ensure Cyprus' independence and sovereignty. Instead, Turkey ended up dividing the island, occupying 37 percent of its territory and displacing 160,000 Greek Cypriots and 50,000 Turkish Cypriots.
Provoking a wider war for regional domination implies that some people within the Turkish political and military establishments would like to see an incursion into the Kurdistan region in Iraq that ends with a longer-term invasion and occupation. If Iraq disintegrates entirely, the final stage of occupation would then be extended to annexation.
Many would say that we have not seen any justification in Turkish propaganda preparing for a second scenario that leads in that direction. However, the Turkish chief of the General Staff, General Yasar Buyukanit, made the point clearly at the Turkish War Academies a month ago when he said, "Iraq is rapidly moving toward a confederation. Division in Iraq is very close. An independent state in the north of Iraq would be not only a political threat but also a security threat. Turkey must look at the north of Iraq from a political, military and psychological perspective."
It is fully possible that if an incursion takes place we will hear two arguments during the subsequent stages of invasion, occupation and annexation, in addition to the Kurdistan region being portrayed as a political, security, military and psychological threat to the Turkish Republic. One is the idea that Mosul should be returned to Turkey because no Turkish government has ever accepted the 1926 Anglo-Turkish Agreement under which Mosul became part of Iraq based on a decision reached by the League of Nations.
The other is that anticipated tensions between Turkmens in the Kirkuk region and the Kurds resulting from a Turkish military adventure will be cited by the Turkish military and the "public servants of provocation" to justify Turkish occupation (and if possible also annexation) of Kirkuk to protect their kinsmen.
No one has better expressed Erdogan's fear regarding a wider war than the president of the Kurdistan regional government Massoud Barzani, who said recently, "The continuous, direct threats of Turkey against the Kurdistan region ... have created a doubt, leading us close to the conviction that exactly this is the aim. The Kurdistan region is the target."
Erdogan has also hinted, equally strongly, that the "public servants of the provocation" might want the moderate Islamist government not only to be embarrassed but also to face a third round of brinkmanship with the military - the first two being confrontations over the election of the president in 2007 in which the governing Justice and Development Party ultimately gained clear-cut democratic support.
If Erdogan fails to prevent a massive incursion into the Kurdistan region by almost 100,000 Turkish troops to combat 3,000 to 4,000 PKK fighters, he will not only put Turkey in an extremely difficult position with the Kurds in Iraq, the United States, NATO, the European Union and the United Nations, but he will also risk the military winning this third round of brinkmanship in the struggle by the civilian government to control the military. At that point, EU attempts to promote democracy and peaceful conflict resolution and to coordinate European foreign policy with Turkey will face a severe challenge.
* Published in Lebanon's THE DAILY STAR November 05, 2007. Khaled Salih is Kurdistan regional government spokesman. He is also a senior lecturer in Middle East politics at the University of Southern Denmark. The views expressed here are personal. His commentary first appeared at bitterlemons-international.org, an online newsletter. |
